Fireballs

The American Meteor Society has received over 100 reports of a bright fireball seen from mid western states at approximately 8:30 PM local eastern time. Witnesses from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan and Pennsylvania reported an extremely large and bright bluish green ball of light followed by a bright white tail. Sighting reports clustered the start and end point of the meteor near the Ohio and Kentucky border, heading from the east almost due west.

The Doppler radar image of ‘unknown turbulence’ over Beebe, Arkansas, on January 1st 2011

Thousands of people across northeastern Oklahoma are asking the same question today: So what WAS it?

The "it" in this case was a very loud boom that was heard and felt at about 8 p.m. Saturday, January 25, 2014. Moments after it happened, the News On 6 social media accounts were jammed with people wanting to know if anyone else had heard and felt it.

The police and fire department scanners in the newsroom crackled to life with dispatchers telling crews in the field about all the calls to 911 about it.

People across the News On 6 viewing area reported a very similar experience: a boom loud enough to be heard indoors that shook windows and even rattled doors. It's understandable why they would want to know what caused it. That goes double for those of us here at News On 6.

Comment: So that rules military jets out then for all these overhead booms currently being reported in every state daily...

Could Wayne and Darla Janca of Roanoke find what came flying through the sky on Friday night?

They and untold others saw the meteor on their drive home from dinner in Southlake. Some even captured the glowing meteor on video as it shot through the atmosphere.

"We both looked at each other and said, 'That looks like it hit pretty close to home," said Darla Janca.

After a good night's sleep, Wayne and his wife followed their hunch.

"The next day we went out and were looking in the dirt, seeing if we can find anything," Wayne said. "Right before we gave up, I looked down at my foot and there it was! It looked like liquid metal melted into the ground."

The discovery was made in Roanoke, not far from the Jancas' home. But what they dug up may have traveled millions of miles to get here.

On the second day of 2014, a small asteroid blew up high in Earth's atmosphere. It was relatively harmless - the rock was only a couple of meters across, far too small to hit the ground or do any real damage - and it disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean anyway.

What's cool is that now we know for sure this is the case: Infrasound detectors designed to listen for nuclear bomb detonations actually heard the explosion from the impact and were able to pinpoint the location of the event to a few hundred kilometers east off the coast of Venezuela.

General consensus is that the Dark Ages were the worst of all the ages. Unicorns went extinct, you were either a witch or had the plague, and oh yeah, winter lasted for ten years once.

A recent article in New Scientist is giving some scientific validity to the big chill recounted in ancient medieval texts such as this one:

"And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed" - Procopius (Wars, 4.14.5)

Comment: Back in 2004 another team of scientists came to this conclusion and gave even more information:

The surprising result of the new work is just how small a comet is needed to cause such dramatic effects. The scientists calculate that a comet not much more than half a kilometre across could cause a global nuclear winter effect. This is significantly smaller than was previously thought.

Dr. Ward-Thompson said: "One of the exciting aspects of this work is that we have re-classified the size of comet that represents a global threat. This work shows that even a comet of only half a kilometre in size could have global consequences. Previously nothing less than a kilometre across was counted as a global threat. If such an event happened again today, then once again a large fraction of the earth's population could face starvation."

The comet impact caused crop failures and wide-spread starvation among the sixth century population. The timing coincides with the Justinian Plague, widely believed to be the first appearance of the Black Death in Europe. It is possible that the plague was so rampant and took hold so quickly because the population was already weakened by starvation.

A Dillon resident snapped a photo of a fireball in the sky just before 8:00 a.m Tuesday morning. Ruth Jackson of Dillon spoke to NBC Montana over the phone and says she had no idea what she was looking at, so she pulled over to take a photo.

"We were driving east on Helena St. in Dillon and the sun hadn't come up yet but there was this bright thing in the sky and I said to my husband, "What is that?" said Jackson.

She was a passenger in the car along with her husband and two granddaughters. They were on their way to drop the girls off at school when they stopped to take the picture.

"I am always looking for something to take a picture of, but this was just awesome," said Jackson.

We showed the photos to the MSU Space Grant Consortium and met with Director Angela Des Jardins. She weighed in and tells us what they appear to be at first glance.